The deadline for TIGSource’s PGC is tomorrow evening, but we’re not going to have anything ready for it. Here’s why:

Ok, gather round everyone! Annabelle doesn’t have proper internet access at the moment, but I’ve been chatting to her sporadically over the last couple of days, and we have a couple of announcements to make – some good news, and some, well, bad news.

Let’s have the good news first: we started this project with a very simple idea in mind – but over the last few weeks things have gone a lot better than we were expecting. So much so that we’ve decided to turn it into a really serious project. For the next couple of months we’re both basically going to keep working on this fulltime and see what happens 🙂

With that, though, we have some bad news. We’re not going to have anything for the contest deadline. We talked about releasing a short demo, but anything we released at this point would probably be a bit of a let down. We both have big plans for this game, and we just don’t think it’s ready yet – like Annabelle said way back on the third page, we want this to be magical and polished the first time everyone plays it!

We may have a teaser trailer sometime next week, but I’m not promising anything 🙂

Alright then. Thanks for the encouraging comments, everyone ;D I can’t wait to play all the other entries to this contest!

From now on, Ciellus is my fulltime project. In fact, I’ve removed the other projects from the sidebar to reflect that 🙂

Man, I can’t believe that three weeks ago I hadn’t even started this. Wasn’t even going to enter the bloody PGC contest.

7 Comments so far

Awesome! I know how great it can feel to find the ‘main’ project, something you really care about developing and making it the best it can be… hell, I’m wrapped up in one right now 😉

The in-game art so far looks extremely Cave Story-ish, is that purely an artistic choice or does it reflect anything about the gameplay? I should probably get around to playing through that damn game, one of these days… :p

Thanks, man 🙂 I does kinda feel weird to just put the puzzle game to one side though 🙁

The in-game art so far looks extremely Cave Story-ish, is that purely an artistic choice or does it reflect anything about the gameplay?

Haha, I guess Cave Story resemblances aren’t really something you can avoid when you’re working at such a small resolution with a certain shading style. But I don’t think it’s what Annabelle’s going for.

To be honest, I think it looks way better than Cave Story – not to knock Cave Story, which is a gorgeous game, but it’s so blocky and rigid – the backgrounds in particular are just 100×100 images repeated over and over, for example. Ciellus is way more organic by comparison 🙂

As for gameplay, there’s really no connection – Cave Story is all about shooting, while Ciellus doesn’t even have enemies, heh.

I should probably get around to playing through that damn game, one of these days… 😛

You certainly should, it’s a masterpiece 🙂

Josiah on
June 2nd, 2008

Looking back, sorry if I sounded like a presumptuous jerk with the cave story ‘accusation.’ didn’t mean to. :p

It was more the character that I was referring to; the proportions and style just made Cave Story immediately jump to mind, so I was just a bit curious. 🙂 The look fits wonderfully with the tiles though, which are indeed a lot more organic and original than what I saw of Cave Story’s. I think the organic element is what reminded me most of Ico, actually.